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Watering

Cool season lawn grasses—bluegrasses, ryegrasses, fescues, and bentgrasses—require approximately 1 to 1 1/2 inches of water per week during the growing season to maintain green and active growth. Even when they are watered, however, the growth of cool season lawn grasses slows during summer’s hot, dry weather because environmental conditions are not within the optimum range for turfgrass growth.

Number 1 Rule – Water in the Morning

Summertime in Kansas can be sweltering. So, in the spirit of water efficiency, it’s best to irrigate in the morning. Doing this will result in less water lost to evaporation while allowing for the lawn to dry up before nightfall.

Additional Info to help keep your lawn healthy during the heat of the Summer:
1. Do not mow turf too short. During spring and autumn in the north central region, maintain most lawns at 3 t0 3.5 inches. Raise this height during the summer and any time the lawn is stressed by pests or environmental conditions. Mow frequently and never remove more than one-third of the grass blade at any one mowing. Depending on your mower you may not be able to raise the deck to more than 4 inches, if you are unsure the best option during the heat of Summer is to raise the deck as high as it will go.

– Pro Tip: Most mowers have a setting for deck height, and from experience most of them are wrong. To find out your deck height simply place your mower on a flat surface grab a tape measure and measure the distance from the ground to the bottom of the blade. If you are one of the lucky ones, it should match the number on your mower, if not you can adjust the deck based on your measurement. Tire pressure can effect deck height so be sure your mower tires are properly inflated.

2. Limit lawn traffic during hot, dry periods.

3. It is best to water deeply and infrequently. Water to the depth of the turf root system, that is, supply enough water in one irrigation to moisten the entire soil profile where roots are growing. Usually, 1 inch of water is adequate to supply this amount. Do not water again until this soil area has dried, and then water the entire soil-root zone again.

4. Avoid light, frequent irrigation unless you have just seeded an area. Light frequent irrigation encourages shallow turfgrasses rooting and annual weed invasion.

5. To determine when to water, walk on your lawn to see if your footprints are visible behind you. On lawns in need of water, the grasses will not spring back following trafficking. Where moisture is adequate, grasses will spring back.

Seasonal Adjustments

What worked for your lawn this spring won’t cut it when it comes to the summer heat and humidity. Seasonal adjustments to your irrigation controller will help ensure that your lawn is getting the hydration it needs. Several factors will influence how much water your plants will need, such as slope, local weather patterns, wind velocity, and the amount of sun exposure each zone receives. You are able to manually increase the number of days that your irrigation system will run, as well as how long each zone receives water.

An alternative method of managing lawn irrigation is to allow the lawn to go dormant during hot, dry weather. Unwatered lawns of cool season species normally become dormant and brown during hot, dry periods and then recover acceptably when growing conditions improve in the late summer or early autumn. During most years, lawns in the north central region can safely survive periods without summer irrigation.

How can Condray & Young Help?

If you have any questions about the amount of water your landscape requires, just give us a call. We can talk with you about your specific needs or we can send our team to make adjustments for you!

Army Worms

How To Identify Armyworms (And What You Can Do About Them)

Armies of hungry, destructive pests are invading lawns throughout our region, leaving once-green and healthy lawns bare and brown.

It can happen practically overnight.

What to watch for? What to do about it? Let’s take a look.

What Are Armyworms?
Actually, they aren’t worms at all, but striped caterpillars, the larvae of the ordinary-looking brown fall armyworm moth.

The moth survives year-round in warmer climates, from South America to the southern U.S. Each year they invade more northern regions until cold weather zaps them.

How to Identify Armyworms
The worms are 1-1.5 inches long and vary in color from green to brown to black. There’s a wide black stripe running down each side of the body and an upside down Y marking on the head.

If you suddenly notice a lot of birds on your lawn, beware. They may be feasting on a horde of tasty armyworms.

How Do I Get Rid of Armyworms?
Now that you know what you’re dealing with, the most important question remains: how to get rid of them.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so learning to identify armyworm eggs and treat them before they hatch is the ideal proposition. However, most of us lead busy lives, so skulking around the edges of the lawn and checking out the undersides of leaves on bushes isn’t always practical or possible.

If you have discovered an active armyworm infestation, it’s important to treat it before it gets out of hand. There are many over the counter treatments avaiable at your local home and garden centers to use yourself. A majority of the time you will end up with to much or to little product, or even the wrong product. If you choose to treat them on your own please be sure to read the label before applying and make sure your applying the correct amount.

Or simply give us a call and let our trained technicians do all the hard work for you.

Lawn Fungus

If your lawn is starting to turn yellow in summer, there’s a pretty good chance it has disease issues.

Turf disease starts as small lesions and will quickly spread making the turf appear dead or drought stressed. These pictures are of leaf spot. The first shows how the disease starts and the second taking over the yard.
Examples of Fungus

We are starting to see a lot of lawn fungus such as red thread, leaf spot, dollar spot and, brown patch. These turf diseases become active when humidity and temperatures are right. Given that the conditions are ideal right now there are a few things that you can do as a homeowner and that we can do as your turf care provider.

Watering should be done early morning if possible. Watering in the evening or overnight can leave the turf damp and promote the spread of the disease. When watering, avoid short bursts of water daily and favor deep soaking once or twice a week. This will ensure that the water gets deep into the soil where the roots can absorb it. Shallow watering will equate to shallow root structure and will not stand in drought conditions. Keep in mind that turf needs one inch of water per week to survive and one and a half to be healthy.

Keep your mower blades sharp and clean. Dull blades tear the grass instead of cutting it creating lesions that disease will easily enter and infect the plant. Washing the blades after each mow will also mitigate the spread of the disease. Lastly raise the height of your mower so that the turf is at least 3.5 inches and mow regularly. Shorter turf will not only lose color faster it is more susceptible to disease and turf that is allowed to grow high and then scalped down will go into shock and most certainly contract disease. A good rule of thumb is 30%, never take off more than that or the turf will suffer. Lawns should be mowed at least once a week and can be mowed every five days when it is growing quickly.

We recommend a fungicide treatment as soon as conditions are right for disease. The earlier we catch the problem the better, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If we can catch it early enough often times one treatment will prevent a problem, however, if it is let go for too long we will have to apply a second treatment 17 – 22 days later to gain control of the disease. 

Call or email us TODAY and we will add a fungicide treatment to your program and protect your turf this summer!

Condray & Young Launches Newly Redesigned Website to Deliver Better Customer Service

Condray & Young has been offering quality lawn care services at affordable prices to our community for a long time now, and the one thing that we have learned, is that customer service is just as important as the lawn care services we offer. Condray & Young goes above and beyond to ensure that our customers are extremely happy with our work, and now we are making it easier to request and pay for services. Continue reading→